Radio Papesse

Frequencies permeate our life-world on all levels.

They can be abstract, unfathomable, they can lurk at the threshold of our hearing, they can be extremely figurative or even plainly obtrusive. They can be soothing, piercing, alarming, beautiful, awe inspiring, familiar. Once in a blue moon they come along single, as one clear tone, more often they huddle in clusters or patterns.

Frequencies sail like clouds along the horizons of our perception. They rain on us. And they sneak into the deepest layers of our brain, where they conjure up memories or feelings or both. As a series of life-world-frequency vignettes, Errant Waves in Arcardia assembles varied notions of mimicry, dirt, duration and osmosis.

Recordings and composition: Gabi Schaffner, 2022
Accordion: Olsen Wolf, 2020
Musical Saw: Mimosa Pale, 2012/2020
Cat: Augustin, 2021
Drums: Toni Brokoli, Patrick Guderitz, 2020
String instrument: Anonymous Lady in Folk Music Shop, Taiwan 2019
Xylophone: Stella Braun, 2011
Husky dogs: recorded by Nathalie Grenzhaeuser, 2021

Gabi Schaffner works as an interdisciplinary sound artist and curator. Her artistic practice is determined by the methods of poetic ethnography in connection with fluxus-like xt to her radiophonic productions, Schaffner creates speculative musical genres and inserts them into music history in order to raise awareness for cultural, gender-related and/or geographical conditions. Schaffner has been realising award-winning productions with Deutschlandfunk Kultur, radia.fm, Hessian Cultural Radio and ABC Australia. Since 2012 she maintains DATSCHA RADIO, a nomadic transmission project that links the medium of radio to current ecological issues.